Trump's word ban is attempted mind and social control

Use all your words. Promote these banned words, thoughts, ideas, and identities.

Like all sensible Americans, I was incensed by this list of banned words by the Trump administration.

These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration (Yourish K, Daniel A, Datar S, White I, Gamio L. NYT, March 7, 2025. Gift article)

They don’t like trans, queer, mental health, trauma, race or racism. They don’t like women or breastfeeding. They don’t want us to discuss hate speech, diversity, equity, inclusion, or climate change. Trump doesn’t like the word injustice.

Can you imagine a Department of Justice that doesn’t reckon with injustice?

There have been movements to promote banned books. We must have a movement to use and promote these banned words. Post this list everywhere.

I think that all of this flies directly in the face of freedom of speech, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and many other laws and fundamental rights. I think Trump’s attempts to punish universities, organizations, and individuals for using these words and protesting policies (most prominently the war in Gaza) will be challenged and knocked out by courts.

But make no mistake, this is sheer intimidation and attempted social and mind control. They don’t like where we are going with these words. But of course these words represent ideas and language that the Trump/Vance/Musk contingent are quite thin-skinned about. Talk about snowflakes. Talk about walking on eggshells. Talk about arrogance, dismissal, and devaluation. Talk about an attempt to rewrite the American psyche.

Big Daddy is saying, “I will not have that language in this house, young lady!”

These are small minded people who don’t understand - the real threats are the threats to love, compassion, and the integrity of relationship. Not words and ideas that challenge us to do better by our relationships. No, they don’t want to do better by their relationships. They want to dominate others. They want others to exalt and fear them. They resent the social change that has challenged the dominance of Wealthy White Conservative Males. Enter their whitelash, which has been building for decades, in rejection of civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and America’s deepening commitment to immigration. If you didn’t know what White Supremacy looked like, take a gander.

They fear belonging. They want primacy and supremacy. They want to dominate news cycles. We can clearly see what’s wrong with them. The challenge is for us to evolve past them into something better, better even than what existed before they took office. We have to reboot the country on the grounds of compassion and shared humanity, not simply a quest for political power, economic, and military might.

Let’s use our words and deepen our minds and hearts.

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Yesterday’s post featured a podcast with Elaine Miller-Karas.

I analogized Trump’s Oval Office debacle with President Zelensky as the drama of the abusive family. I should have made it more clear. It’s as if Uncle Putin molested a child in the family, and Daddy Trump wants everybody to shut up about it. “If you talk about that, it will start World War III!” He got that language from Musk, who probably got it from Putin. (See Christiane Amanpour’s interview with Walter Isaacson on Elon Musk's life, ego and 'lack of empathy'.)

We must collectively stand up against all abuse. Trump, Musk and Vance are themselves victims of abuse - but the worst bullies are “victim-perpetrators.” They can be insidiously cruel. Dr. Bandy Lee has said violence is an “impulse gone awry.” These folks are instinctively impulsive on the point of self-promotion. Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt seems to model herself on a North Korean news broadcast. “Us good! Them bad! Trump know everything! Them know nothing!”

They are trying to spin us into their grandiose delusions of grandeur and omnipotence.

Don’t let them. “Resist, Refuse, and Ridicule” can exist alongside the cultivation of compassion, reason and relationship. As we are bothered and frustrated by “what is wrong with these people?” we have to push back with what is right with us - what needs to be tended, cultivated, and grown.

Inch by inch, row by row - we’re gonna make this garden grow!

Pete Seeger says in the attached video from the 1970s: “We have all kinds of songs. I have faith that if only people get a chance to hear a lot of different kinds of things they’ll decide what are the good ones.”

Pete’s banjo read, “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender,” a gentler version of Woody Guthrie’s guitar slogan, “This machine kills fascists.”

Years from now, we will say: “They tried to play us. But they didn’t know we were a song.”

Let’s make this American poem sing.

Warmly,

Ravi